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BigSmoke

id
Posts: 844

Location: Indonesia
Occupation: Following Those Damn Trains
Age:
V$: Broke
#152616   2019-01-04 13:13          
Birthday Presents




IT'S THE FIRST UPDATE OF THE YEAR! :D
After ordering one more thing, all my parts has arrived at WestKyo Garage.
And to top it off, they arrived AT MY BIRTHDAY! :bananajump: :pimping:
Surely a good gift for myself eh? :))
Well let's jump into the update!




[01 Jan 2019]
Happy new year everyone! After the celebration at the marina, everyone got back to sleep quickly since we're all full of snacks.......excpet Marc(Macaron_moon) and AJ(RocketBunnyS13), who decided to down some more Asahi beers. Welp, I guess that's how they bring themselves to sleep after huge parties.

By midday when we all woke up, new year greetings texts and postcards flood our phones. But I also got a very, very good news. Most of my business contacts started their work at the end of January, so extending my holiday here is a possibility. I asked the WestKyo boys about this, and they gladly accept the stay extension. YAY! :D

The only thing that bugs me a bit is that some of my orders will be delayed for a while. Thankfully, only local deliveries are affected, which means only my LSDs and clutch. They'll arrive at late Jan 2. RHDJapan also informed me that they also still accept orders, with items arriving at late Jan 3. Coincidentally, I came across a good deal over JUN lightweight flywheel there, so I bought one myself for V$398. Originally I was going for TODA's, but JUN ones is cheaper and lighter.

Welp, the shopping spree can't be helped I guess. I wonder if any of the boys also bought themselves a present?


[02 Jan 2019]
We spent our day either continuing on wrenching and improving our cars, browsing for new year discounts on car parts on the internet, or replying back new year greetings texts and postcards. And of course, having breakfast together with Marc's speciality ramen as the menu. It might be just ramen cups, but trust me, it's so delicious it'll add at least 60 BHP in your heart and brain for the day :D

But at midday, Muza(Niatross) informed me that the famous Initial D arcade cabs at Sega Joypolis Tokyo will be closed in the middle of January. If you didn't know, said cabs has replica of Initial D cars as the seats and each cab moves gyroscopically as you turn around the corners. Here's a video demonstrating it. Seeing as we're all in Tokyo and has never been there our whole lifetime, we decided to pay a visit later this or next week.

Later in the day, my LSD and clutch packages arrived in the shop. Living in Tokyo does give you a benefit indeed, everything seems to quickly arrive for you.


[03 Jan 2019]
For some of us, Michael Schumacher was our hero, and we spent our childhood seeing him clinching wins after wins. So to pay tribute to him, we spent the day seeing his racing vids, play some games that features his car, and so on. Hell, I went a step further by wearing red all day long. Sadly, none of us has either a Ferrari or a Mercedes (though Muza had one for a while) :)) a drive in one would complete the tribute imo.

Out of curiosity, I asked if it is allowed to swim around the marina to the boys. Turns out it isn't allowed since obviously the sea water around the marina is deep. This also explains why there are two boat piers around the town, as well as a boating school. Despite this, there's a small beach and a vista point nearby, which can only be slightly seen from the furthest pier. Perhaps I could swim or simply have a tan there?

Later in the day, the flywheel package arrived. Judging by it's weight it might be suitable to grind the edges of the OEM ones and turning it into a discus for the discus throw sport, or even better(?), a frisbee :))


[04 Jan 2019]
It's my birthday! But to be honest, I don't expect anything big, not even a cake. I guess I haven't told the boys about this sooo that's okay to me. Anyway, I woke up early in the morning. The view from the lounge is quite peaceful, and it was a cold morning as well. Marc's Evo X and Rifky(Shez)'s DC5 become the icing on the cake of the view.

Despite this, it still feels like Neon Genesis Evangelion kicks itself into real life as there's no snow. Well hopefully the robots and monsters didn't make an appearance as well, that'll be dangerous. Oh, speaking of which, hands up if you're planning to watch the original series later this year on Netflix.

Later in the day, finally the last piece of the transmission upgrade came to the garage, which is the TMZ Performance transmission, transfer case and rear diff rebuild kits. I was ecstatic because not only everything has arrived, the last one arrived on my birthday as well. Better still, I'm currently in a shop with all the tools required and best of all, there's Marc the Human Lan Evo to help me. Yep, his knowledge on Evos is on-par with, if not a league above Ohira-sensei in Tsukuba. And since 4G63 engines has been adopted within a lot of cars other than Evos, I reckon he can do magic over aything equipped with it, not just Evos. And so, he became my sensei for the day.

Once again, I reversed my Evo into the work bay. After we had breakfast, the car is lifted and all the equipments and the upgrades has been set, we started the huge work.

The good thing about the LDSs are their locking method can be changed. Specifically, we turned the front LSD into a 1.5-way LSD and the rear one into a 2-way LSD. We set them to lock at 25%. And oh, we also adjusted the gear set setting, now most of the gears are a bit longer to compensate the extra traction from the LSDs. Here we also found out that the center diff is basically an open diff, per the standart of the Evos of it's time.

The 4-spider center diff conversion strengthens the diff for even drag racing purposes, but of course I'm not gonna do that. Still, that's quite reassuring for daily and trackday usage (I'm really grateful for not ticking the welded diff option, people said it's horrible for daily) as it gives better traction. But later on, I found that the WRC version of Evo III also uses LSD for the center diff.

Should I switch to them or stick to the current diff? Cusco center LSD for Evo III is a bit difficut to found, and one that I found is different type (Type MZ instead of RS, the only difference is the locking time and method). But if I do, I can combine it with this. So what do you think? Let me know!

And uh, if you still don't get what I'm talking about, scroll to the bottom of this linky here to find out what I'm talking about.

Anyway, back to the process. After a long process of adjustment and assembly, the operation was finished around 8 hours later and we put the car down the work bay. We worked quite intensely we forgot to have lunch :))

Lunch done, I jumped into the Evo for a small testing. Sadly there's no racetrack nearby, but eh, this will simulate daily usage condition as well so that's okay. Here we go!

Relatively speaking, I wonder what AJ will do to his S2K..........

Initial impression is good to me. The car now pulls itself off junction quicker, and the bite is sufficient in traffic speeds. There are some traffic present at the moment, most of them went to the marina or the boating school. It was a sunny afternoon as well, so I can't blame them anyway.

When I'm approaching the hill section, it was quiet with clear traffic ahead, so I start to give it the beans. The traction bite now really kicks in hard, and the gear setup prolongs it's breathe vastly. Yup, I'm certain this will be useful on tracks, highways and touge routes! :thumbsup:

Frankly speaking, I love the hilly areas here, the Evo feels like it's on a rally stage while blasting around it. I mean look, it's rather similar to urban stages of Tarragona/Tour de Corse! (except that of course they're much narrower)

With testing done,I return to the garage in cheerful mood. What a way to celebrate my birthday!








First update of the year has been done! :pimping:
Let's see how my wallet survives the continued shopping spree.......




That's all my updates for now, thank you for stopping by and see you soon!
(either here or one of the WestKyo boys RPs)
Still following the damn train since 1992

Visit my RP HERE!